Back at the boat today...I dremelled out the crack that is forming in the rudder to see how deep it really was. Deep. I never really came to the bottom of the crack as you would if it was really just cosmetic. I also found that the cracking continues up the forward edge of the rudder to the top. As you can see from the picture below chunks came out when I started to dremel this. I also drilled a couple of holes toward the bottom of the rudder and they were weepy for the rest of the day. So, I am trying to contact Catalina Direct Tech support (this will challenge your patience). I am probably ordering a new rudder from them but want to make sure that there isn't some other sort of fix. The new rudder would not be cheap and it will take 4-6 weeks to get here. That's cutting it a little close for us!
OK, so back on board I attempted to change out the old gate valves with ball valves. As I was unscrewing the one for the head I suddenly realized that the valve wasn't turning at all but, rather, I was turning the half-inch pipe within the fiberglass! It came out nicely! I was told to replace these pipes and I was hoping to avoid this but now I'm glad this happend. This really shows how delicate these old pipe stem fittings can be. Now I'll replace the entire through-hull for both the head and the engine. Fun.
So, maybe I can work on something and NOT break it! I replaced the packing in the prop shaft compression fitting . We'll see how I did on this when we measure how high the water squirts when we put her back in the water!
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